There seems to be an even greater link between emotions and music, than we may have previously imagined. A new research has analyzed data relating to the music listening preferences of users of streaming service Spotify, to understand the link between factors such as time of the day, geographical location, age and gender dictating the choice of music that users listen to. The study called “Global music streaming data reveal diurnal and seasonal patterns of affective preference” published in Nature Human Behaviour has been authored by Minsu Park of the Department of Information Science at Cornell University and Michael Macy of the Department of Sociology at Cornell University.
The researchers analyzed what is clearly a rather large data set—this includes 765 million online music plays streamed by 1 million users, from the streaming service Spotify in 2016. The researchers say that these users are spread across 51 countries around the world. They also used Spotify’s music curation tools, which rate tracks and albums into categories such as relaxing or energetic.
The findings of the study are rather detailed. First, almost half of the internet aged between 16 years and 64 years tend to stream music online during the daytime. Women globally listen to music which is of lower intensity, though in the southern hemisphere, women chose higher intensity music than men.
Researchers found that Spotify users in the Western countries usually play more arousing or upbeat music, while listeners in Asia prefer more relaxing music genres. “There were differences in baselines. Younger people listen to more intense music; compared with other regions, music played in Latin America is more arousing, while music in Asia is more relaxing; and compared with other chronotypes, ‘night owls’ (people who are habitually active or wakeful at night) listen to less-intense music,” says the study.
However, there are similarities in music preferences across demographics, cultures and geographies too. Researchers say that the diurnal patterns across cultures and demographic groups are similar in the sense that most individuals listen to relaxing music late at night and more energetic music during normal business hours, including mid-afternoon when affective expression is lowest.
There are differences in music preferences that are dictated by weather and season. The research suggests that people prefer relaxing music during the cold days or in the winter season, but switch to more up-tempo music during the warmer days or summer season.
"Across the social sciences there's a lot of interest in the study of emotion and emotional regulation and preferences. Suddenly we have these data on what music people are choosing to listen to all over the world, and it's a remarkable opportunity to advance our understanding, empirically, of people's emotional management based on how they use music," says Michael Macy, who has co-authored the study.
While this data may not really change the way you listen to music, or indeed what you listen to, this does put into perspective how a variety of factors in or beyond our control, tend to impact what we listen to. Perhaps now you will better understand why you are listening to a particular album or playlist at any point of time. At the same time, your favorite music streaming service may now have some reference points to better curate the music options for you, to go with certain external factors.
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